From a preview of the text Lolita there are a couple things to learn about Vladimir Nabokov. After studying at Cambridge he launched his literary career in Berlin and Paris. After he moved to the United States in the 1940s he achieved an acclaimed named and extraordinary relationship as not just an author but poet, critic, and translator. A quote on the back of the book from John Updike can also give us insight to how respected his name was by other literary geniuses, "I'd never seen writing quite like this before, writing so precise and witty, and so full of little surprises," (Updike, Of John Updike and Vladimir Nabokov). Big publication names like Vanity Fair also wrote about the authenticity of the master piece saying it was, "The only convincing love story of the century," (Vanity Fair, Gregor von Rezzori). Nabokov died in Switzerland during 1977, 22 years after Lolita was published. .
Upon the publication of Lolita, Nabokov was subject to all kinds of criticism. This kind of story regarding a pedophile was something new to audiences and pushed many boundaries especially the way the text sympathizes for the protagonist, or is he an antagonist, and his erotic love for a little girl. In a 1958 review Charles Rolo writes that despite its explicit theme and focus the novel does not actually allude to a single provocative term. R.W. flint writes in the New Republican that one of the aspects of the book that makes it so admirable is how it tells a "love affair with the real America," (Flint, New Republican). Nabokov's novel communicates the authenticity of life in America at the time by staying to true to the circumstance and standardized living of that American environment which ultimately weaves the story together. The same New Republican article also talks about how when Lolita was first published it was so profound and unlike anything else that it was stripped of lots of the fleshier and edgier bits that make it so enticing to readers today.
